Big Data capability and sustainability oriented innovation: The mediating role of intellectual capital

Abstract

The past decade has seen the rapid emergence of research on Big Data and its implications in our society, yet research on its impact on organizations' sustainability challenges is still at an early stage. Based on the organizational learning theory, we develop a framework to investigate the effects of Big Data capability (BDC) and further intellectual capital on a firm's sustainability‐oriented innovation performance (SIP). Using a multi‐source data collected from 358 Chinese firms, we tested our proposed hypotheses using the partial least squares‐structural equation modeling (PLS‐SEM) and the fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). The results show that BDC is positively related to SIP and economic innovation performance (EIP), mediated by intellectual capital. The fsQCA results further reveal that three configurative combinations, that is, “external capability‐internal resource promotion,” “external capability and relationship building help,” and “external relationship collaboration compensation,” can lead to high SIP. This study provides new insights for firms to develop sustainability‐oriented innovation and to coordinate sustainability innovation and economic innovation practices in order to create balanced outcomes.

Acquiring Sustainability in The Prospect of Digital Transformation Through Global Brain-Reflective Accounting Practices Application

“…According to La Torre et al (2018), intellectual capital accounting can help to understand the factors that determine the value of big data, including data quality, security and privacy concerns, data visualization, and user interaction. These obsevations widens the obtained results in several prior studies on the interconnection between intellectual capital and big data (i.e., De Santis and Presti (2018); Ndou et al (2018); La Torre et al (2018)) as well as the role of intellectual capital in the interconnection between big data capability and sustainability (i.e., Wang et al (2023)).…”

Big data analytics capability and social innovation: the mediating role of knowledge exploration and exploitation

“…It is contended in this study that big data analytics capabilities may enhance social innovation through the process of knowledge management (Unceta et al, 2016). On the one hand, the organizational learning theory shows that organizations can increase their capabilities to compete by exploring and exploiting knowledge (Andriopoulos and Lewis, 2009;Crossan et al, 1999;Wang et al, 2023b), during which big data analytics capabilities can support employees to explore and exploit internal and external knowledge and thus facilitate the organizational learning process (Gupta and George, 2016). On the other hand, the urgent need for more social innovation in the organizational context also drives organizations to utilize their knowledge exploration and exploitation capabilities to generate the information needed for social innovation, which again can be facilitated by big data analytics capabilities (Unceta et al, 2016).…”

The effect of green intellectual capital and innovative work behavior on green process innovation performance in the hospitality industry

“…(2016) state that intellectual capital affects the creation and acceptance of innovations, highlighting the adoption of innovativeness. Moreover, organizations and their operations have become increasingly digital, the intellectual capital required to use these systems and adopt innovative behaviors (Wang et al ., 2023). This study underlines the significance of intellectual capital, particularly its green dimension, in determining GPIP (Dost et al ., 2016; Jirakraisiri et al ., 2021).…”